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Daniel Pauly
Daniel Pauly and his group at the Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia are among the foremost proponents of the "blame it all on fishing" brand of eco-doom. Fortunatey, his apocalyptic speculations - one hesitates to call it research - of late has been greeted with such disfavor by the scientific community, or at least that part of it that isn't funded by the quartet of anti-fishing foundations, that he's taken to writing for such learned journals as The New Republic. In fact, the above Pauly quote was from an article published in the September 28, 2009 issue of The New Republic titled both cleverly, provocatively and somewhat inaccurately Aquacalypse Now - the End of Fish (if you are interested, I wrote a rejoinder for the Saving Seafood website - link - titled Acrockalypse Now - link. I'm anxiously awaiting the fourth in the series.) The Fisheries Centre at UBC has faired quite well under Dr. Pauly's headline grabbing leadership, having acquired $17.7 million from Pew link. One of Dr. Pauly's most startling pronouncements was that the sediment plumes stirred up by shrimp trawlers. His widely circulated statement was "these images of trawler mudtrails confirm that this mode of fishing is terrible. Think of the story about China’s Great Wall being the only human artefacts (sic) visible from space. Now we can add the mudtrails of trawlers.” Somewhat puzzlingly, he made this statement in 2009, a year in which any of us with a computer, a reasonable internet conection and (free) access to Google Easrth could easily view not only the Great Wall of China but also the three skylights on my house, none of which are above 4 feet long or two feet wide. Perhaps the internet hadn't yet made its way into British Columbia (for more on this singular phenomena I refer you again to Acrockalypse Now linked above.
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